Shedding Tongues / Savory Beautiful Swimmer

 

A 3D printed Female Blue Crab from The Smithsonian Institute’s Environmental Research Center, coated in 20 layers of (in order of sediment and accumulation):

 

resin

sand

chalk

car rubber

salt

varnish

car rubber

chalk

plaster

sand

salt

varnish

chalk

shellac

salt

sand

resin

varnish

chalk 

shellac

 

at The Corinium Museum, 2024

invited by Hot Desque, as part of group show Holding Cosmic Dust

The Blue Crab is a used-to-be ubiquitous icon in the Chesapeake Bay region, found in coastal lagoons and estuaries from Nova Scotia, through the Gulf of Mexico, and as far south as Uruguay. Female Blue Crabs moult 18 - 20 times in the course of their lifetime. 

 

A newly shed crab will be about a third bigger than it was before. Following the moult, the crab will eat the exoskeleton it has just shed. Ingesting this calcium rich shell allows the animal to stock up on nutrients needed to synthesise the next shell.

 

Dig. Clamp… Let Go. 

 

Shed. Molt. 

 

An echo of what once was.  A document of a previous life. A ruin. 

 

Nourish. Feed. Grow. Evolve. 

 

Reveal and Obscure. Time will Tell. And again. 

 

Hatch! 

 

Crack. Exposing layers of past and future ruins. 

 

69 

 

In this work, for us the crab became a symbol for movement, bodily experience and the reconsideration of historical narratives and “the collection”, exposing the cracks and layers, offering possibilities for new meanings. We are interested in the role that archaeology and technology hold in the production of knowledge and the endless search for truth in ever transforming environments. Crabs have an amphibious-like nature, mirroring our own paradoxical existences inbetween past-futures, physical-digital and status quo-evolution.